There is an emerging trend of planning agencies playing greater roles in their charrettes and community design workshops. Recently we have been helping planning agencies build capacity to do charrettes through in-house NCI trainings focused on their projects.

In the past six months, NCI has trained staff from two US and two Canadian planning agencies. Last month, Fairfax County Virginia convened staff from planning, transportation and parks for a customized NCI Charrette System™ Certificate in-house training. The course used their upcoming corridor planning projects as the case studies.

The City of Alexandria, VA planning department used the NCI in-house training to prepare for their update to the Old Town master plan. Alexandria moved forward quickly to plan their Old Town charrette. Using the project roadmap developed in the training, the city led the pre-charrette community and outreach efforts and engaged consultants to provide the extra necessary expertise to complete a new master plan during the charrette.

In October, the City of Vancouver, BC brought NCI in for an NCI in-house training to work on a project to rewrite their regulations around public housing. A month later, the County of Grand Prairie in Alberta, Canada brought NCI in for an in-house training focused on their economic development planning plus a neighborhood plan for their fast growing city. These trainings resulted in a cross-disciplinary approach to these important projects.

In each of these in-house trainings, members from city and county agencies came together to learn now to conduct a Project Start-up Intensive to co-create the project purpose, process, scope and budget. They were also trained in the tools and techniques of charrette management. All of these trainings gave the participants a co-authored roadmap, scope and project budget.

If you still have funds left in your budget this year, contact us to schedule an in-house NCI Charrette System™ Certificate Training to learn how NCI can build your organization’s capacity to run charrettes and kick-off your projects in the New Year.

The NCI training was invaluable for City of Vancouver staff who
routinely work on high-impact land use planning initiatives. The NCI
system offers an excellent tool for combining thoughtful citizen
involvement, creative urban design and deep strategic insight. Thank
you! – Amanda Gibbs, City of Vancouver